Nurse's Orders
by badly-knitted
Summary: Nurse Emiry is Dee's worst nightmare; he hates her and she loathes him in return. Right? Set after Vol. 7, but referencing Vol. 4, Act 11 & Vol. 6, Act 17. Written for Challenge 43: Nurse at beattheblackdog.


**Title:** Nurse's Orders

 **Author:** badly-knitted

 **Characters:** Dee, Nurse Emiry, Ryo, OCs.

 **Rating:** PG

 **Setting:** After Vol. 7, but referencing Vol. 4, Act 11  & Vol. 6, Act 17.

 **Summary:** Nurse Emiry is Dee's worst nightmare; he hates her and she loathes him in return. Right?

 **Word Count:** 1521

 **Written For:** Challenge 43: Nurse at beattheblackdog.

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.

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Nurse Emiry, the bane of Dee's existence. He'd never considered himself a coward, but just hearing her name struck a bolt of fear right through him. Surely the woman must be half human and half gorilla. Hell, she was taller than Dee and twice as wide, and there were times he almost managed to convince himself she was a man in drag. No woman should be that huge or that strong. Sheesh!

Right from their first meeting, after Dee had been shot through the leg and almost blown up, he'd had a bad feeling about her. For a nurse, her bedside manner was appalling; he'd been expecting to have some pretty young chick in uniform tending to his needs while he recovered from his injuries, someone who'd fuss over him, smiling and maybe even flirting with him, and instead had found himself at the not-so-tender mercies of a veritable tyrant.

Emiry demanded quiet, good manners, and that patients stay where they were put, taking their meds as ordered and not answering back. Everything was a demand rather than a request with her, and only an idiot would disobey her orders. 'So what does that say about me?' Dee thought gloomily. He hated following orders at the best of times, and being injured just made him more stubborn, so the entire time he'd been in hospital, a battle of wills had been waged between them, usually resulting in Dee losing. Badly.

Their second meeting, after Carol had been kidnapped and held captive, hadn't gone any better. Okay, so the middle of a hospital corridor, with people all around, probably hadn't been the best place to try persuading Ryo to continue with the Test Drive, but they'd been so nearly there, and Ryo had finally been responding before they'd been interrupted. Frustration had built inside him to intolerable levels, and he might have started yelling, just a bit…

The huge hand descending on his shoulder had quickly dissolved his feelings of lust and desire, making his legs tremble for an entirely different reason. She'd been even stronger than he'd remembered, and fighting back had proved futile. She could probably have fought Godzilla to a standstill; what chance did a New York cop stand? The only good thing about that encounter, which had left him bruised and battered, was that the threatened MRI never happened; thankfully, only a doctor could authorise that, and as there was nothing medically wrong with him, it was considered unnecessary. By the time Emiry let him go, all he'd wanted was to go home and die in peace.

And now here he was, face-to-face with his nemesis once again, only this time he was neither the patient nor the one causing a fuss. Even so, the sight of her chilled him to the bone.

She was a monster, a creature of nightmares, something to be dreaded, but she was a nurse too, and he looked at her, bleak-eyed. "Help him," he pleaded, voice hoarse. "Take care of him. Please. I wanna stay with him, but I have to get the bastard who did this."

Was that a flicker of compassion in her eyes? He hated her, and she loathed him, but only Ryo mattered right now, Ryo, and the man who'd tried to kill him, shooting him even though he'd been off-duty and unarmed. Surgery had gone on for hours, but the doctors said Ryo would live, that he'd make a full recovery; Dee couldn't say the same about the man who'd shot him. That bastard needed to pay, and right at that instant Dee would happily have put a bullet through the sadistic creep's brain. Ryo hadn't been his only victim, and only two others had survived, both of them in the intensive care unit of this very hospital. Ryo had simply had the bad luck to stumble across the killer as he'd been dumping another body.

Emiry didn't say a word in response to Dee's request, just nodded slightly. It wasn't until Dee reached the door that she finally spoke. "Detective." Dee paused, looking back over his shoulder. "Bring him in alive, just don't be too gentle about it; I wouldn't object to having him as a patient, I think I might have a few things to say to him before he goes on trial."

Now it was Dee's turn to nod slightly; message received and understood.

When Dee wasn't busy tracking his prey, he spent as much time as the doctors would allow, sitting at Ryo's bedside. Heavily sedated, his injured partner seldom stirred, but the monitors beeped steadily, reassuringly, and Dee was content just to be there, or as content as he could be under the circumstances. Emiry came in and out, glaring at Dee and nodding with grudging approval when he remained still and quiet. In an odd kind of way, she was easy to please; as long as you did what she wanted you to do, there was no problem. The friction between them was entirely down to Dee's stubborn refusal to be dominated by her. The hospital was her turf and she expected to be in charge. In that respect, Dee supposed she had a lot in common with Mother.

It took Dee three days to track down Ryo's attacker. If the killer hadn't known at the time that his last victim was a cop, he sure as hell must have found out by now; it had been all over the news ever since. But Dee's dogged determination paid off and he eventually cornered Garrison Mortimer it an abandoned warehouse near the river, the place he'd taken each of his victims to torture them, until Ryo had caught him disposing of one of the bodies. Armed to the teeth, Mortimer didn't come quietly, and though Dee called for backup, it didn't arrive in time to help him. Both cop and killer were battered and bloody by the time the other units rolled up, but Dee had triumphed. He'd cuffed an unconscious Mortimer to a metal ring set in the wall and was sitting on an upturned crate nursing his own wounds, gun levelled at his prisoner just in case he tried anything else.

Emiry met the ambulances when they arrived, studied Mortimer, cuffed to a gurney and under armed guard, then turned to Dee with an expression of grudging approval on her face. "Nice work, but your defence techniques could clearly use improvement. Look at the mess you're in!" She tutted and fussed, bossing him around as a doctor examined him and patched him up. Almost before he knew it, he'd been wheeled into an elevator, taken up several floors, and installed in the same room as Ryo, who was propped up in bed, awake and looking better than the last time Dee had seen him.

"Dee! What happened?" Ryo gasped, horrified.

"Got the guy who hurt you." Dee replied savagely, grinning although it pulled the stitch in his split lip. "He put up a bit of a fight, but he came off worse in the end. You should see him!"

"Hush, both of you!" Emiry stood between their beds, arms folded over her formidable chest, glaring from one to another. "This is a hospital, and I will have quiet!"

"Whatever you say, Nurse Emiry," Dee told her, leaning back against his pillow and closing his eyes. "You're the boss."

"Hmph. Maybe you're not quite as stupid as you look." She bustled around, straightening covers, making notes on charts, then when she was satisfied everything was in order, she nodded sharply and left. Laytner was a handful, but he was learning.

A week later, the day after the two detectives were discharged, a delivery boy arrived at the hospital and went to reception. "I'm supposed to deliver these to a Nurse Emiry?" he asked one of the attractive young nurses there. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when the pretty nurse pointed to a huge old battleaxe.

"That's Nurse Emiry over there, the one with grey hair."

"Are you sure?"

At a nod from the other nurse, he approached the imposing figure. "Nurse Emiry?" he asked hesitantly.

She peered down her nose at him, like he was an interesting bug or something.

"Yes?"

"Delivery for you." He held out a bouquet of flowers and a big box of chocolates.

Emiry looked confused. "For me? You're sure?"

"That's the name on the card," he told her, adding a hurried "Ma'am," as an afterthought.

Taking the card, Emiry opened it and read the simple message, 'Thanks for everything.' It was signed Dee Laytner. For a rare instant, as she accepted the flowers and candy, her expression softened and she allowed herself a small smile. He was still a work in progress, but Laytner's manners were definitely improving. Just wait until she told her old friend about this. Maria had always had a soft spot for that one, despite all the grief he'd given her growing up, but as usual it seemed she was right; with a bit more work on his manners and lack of patience, he should turn out just fine.

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The End


End file.
